Murder in the Bayou Boneyard

by Ellen Byron

  “Well, to show my gratitude, I’m gifting you with a massage,” Maggie said. “And making sure Barrymore knows yours is free.”

  “Excellent,” Emma responded with a chortle. She pulled a pack of gum out of her pocket and unwrapped a piece, which she popped into her mouth. “Your grandmother told me the massage therapist is your cousin.”

  “Distant, but yes. She’s from the side of the family that was in Louisiana for a while in the mid-1800s, then went back to Canada. Her husband got in touch with us for a genealogy project he was doing for her birthday. We started corresponding, and when I found out Susannah was a masseuse, I floated the idea of her working with us as part of our Halloween package.”

  “That was nice of you.”

  Maggie shrugged, embarrassed. “Maybe. Also a little self-serving. We don’t have much family, so I was excited about meeting her. The spa where Susannah worked in Toronto went out of business, so the timing was perfect. She’s coming with her husband Doug and his two adult kids from his first marriage. It’ll give us all a chance to get to know each other.”

  “You’re lucky.” Emma spit her gum into a wrapper, replacing it with a fresh piece. “I don’t talk to my family anymore. They cut me off after my last stint in rehab.” She looked down at the ground.

  Maggie wondered about the young woman. While only in her midtwenties, she seemed older, like she had already lived a hard life. Her tall body was too slim, her sandy-blonde hair appeared dry and lifeless, and her skin was more weathered and lined than it should have been at her age. “Alcohol?” Maggie asked.

  Emma nodded. “And painkillers. I’m off everything now.” She replaced the gum she was chewing with yet another piece, then held up the now-empty pack. “Except gum. Substituting one addiction for another. Here’s hoping my teeth don’t fall out from all the sugar.” Her phone pinged a text. She read it and pumped a fist. “Yes!”

  “What’s up?”

  Emma grinned and held up her phone. “Great news. Belle Vista got permission from Etienne Dupois’s estate to move the play from their grounds to the Dupois cemetery.”

  Maggie felt her stomach knot up. “Oh. Okay. But … the Belle Vista grounds are so gorgeous. Wouldn’t that be a better setting for the play? And you can light them at night. I don’t know how you light that old cemetery.”

  Emma waved a hand dismissively. “We can figure that out. The cemetery is such a better environment for the play. It’s all about how one of the Dupoises comes back from the dead. We were gonna have to use fake gravestones like those.” Emma motioned to Crozat’s Halloween lawn decorations. “This will be so much better. It’ll be environmental theatre, where there’s no distinction between the performers’ and audience’s space. They’re all in it together.”

  “Cool,” Maggie said, her tone weak as she envisioned four weekends of shuttling Crozat’s guests to the dreaded Dupois graveyard.

  Emma jumped up, sending the swing flying back and forth. Maggie used her feet to slow it down. “I’ve got to go,” the stage manager said. “There’s a ton to do before rehearsal tonight.”

  She took off, leaving Maggie to stew over the play’s change of venue. What Emma said made sense. Guests would love the cemetery’s eerie atmosphere, and the point of all the B and B events was to give guests experiences that no home rental could match. I’ll have to get over my hatred of the place, Maggie thought to herself.

  The front door flew open, revealing Ninette Crozat. “There you are,” she said. “I’ve been calling to you. You didn’t hear me?”

  Maggie shook her head. “No. Sorry.” She noticed her mother looked harried. “Is everything okay?”

  “Yes. Well, I guess so.” Ninette gave her hands a nervous wipe on the apron she seemed to live in. “I got a call from the Canadians. They’re on their way.”

  Maggie jumped up from the swing. “What? I thought they were coming tomorrow.”

  “They were, but Susannah said they were so anxious to meet us that they caught an earlier flight. It would have been nice if they told us sooner, but still, isn’t this exciting?”

  “Yes. Very exciting.”

  Maggie’s strained smile matched her mother’s. She followed Ninette into the house to help prepare a warm welcome for their newfound family, brushing aside an ominous sensation.

  Chapter 2

  Maggie and her father Tug navigated Crozat’s cluttered attic in search of one last side chair for Maggie’s art studio, which the family had turned into temporary housing for their Canadian guests. “If anything could convince me that ghosts exist, it’s this place,” Maggie said as she combed through antiques and detritus accumulated over the many decades since the historic home was first built.

  She spoke through a dust mask—she and Tug wore them to protect themselves from whatever germs might live in the attic’s dusty air. They also wore construction helmets with flashlights attached to guide their way. The only light in the space came from whatever sunlight snuck in through cracks in the old home’s beams. A box almost as tall as Maggie stood sentry in the middle of the room. The box’s plastic window allowed for a peek at what was carefully packed away inside—a centuries-old wedding gown. Maggie, like generations of women on Ninette’s side of the family, would be married in the well-preserved gown stored in the manor house attic, first worn by a Doucet bride almost two hundred years earlier. Maggie adored the gown, which was a stunning confection of silk taffeta and lace that had been carefully preserved by each bride who preceded her. She would have it fitted, wear it once, then preserve it for future generations of Doucet women.

  Maggie walked past the gown to a cluster of furniture. She pulled sheets off a set of beautifully needle-pointed matching chairs. “These are gorgeous.”

  “Too nice for guests, family or not,” Tug said. “Save them for your apartment.” He pulled out a rocking chair carved from maple wood with a cane back and seat. “This is perfect. Let’s go. We don’t have much time.”

  He took the chair, and Maggie followed him out of the attic, locking the door behind her as well as she could. It was old, and the knob felt loose in her hand. They climbed down the narrow stairs to the second floor, where they were met by Gran. She held up two peach fabric swatches. “Which do you like better?” she asked Maggie.

  Maggie took off her mask. “They look exactly the same to me.”

  “They’re not.” Gran held up one. “This is light peach.” She held up the other. “And this is pale peach. Try to imagine each shade decorating every table at our wedding.”

  “I know an exit line when I hear one,” Tug said. He escaped with the rocking chair.

  Maggie eyed the samples her grandmother thrust in front of her. Having happily agreed to a joint wedding on New Year’s Eve with Gran and her fiancé, service station owner Lee Bertrand, Maggie was just as happy that Gran had hijacked the wedding planning. Left to herself, Maggie would have eloped with Bo. But Grand-mère, who had married Maggie’s late grandfather on a train platform before he shipped out to serve in the Korean War, had her heart set on a big shindig for her second time around. She even tried to paint it as an act of altruism. “The Crozat and Durand families coming together with you and Bo? We can’t deprive Pelican of its version of a royal wedding.” Maggie saw through the ruse but couldn’t say no to her beloved grandmother. Given the go-ahead, Gran was all in on everything from table linens to favors. Watching her grandmother become an almost-bridezilla was proving to be entertaining.

  “I trust your taste, Gran,” Maggie said. “You pick. The Canadians will be here any minute. I need to focus on that. We all should.”

  “Yes, of course.” Gran took turns holding each sample up to the light.

  Maggie left her grandmother to the pale-peach-versus-light-peach dilemma and scurried downstairs. She dashed out the manor house’s back door to the shotgun cottage she shared with Gran, where she took a quick shower to rid herself of attic grime. She put on a clean pair of jeans and an olive T-shirt that brought out the
green in her hazel eyes, then brushed her thick thatch of wavy brown hair and headed back to the manor house. Maggie was about to go in when she heard a car coming up the old road that ran alongside the plantation grounds. A nondescript sedan made a left into the Crozat family’s personal parking area. Maggie felt a flush of anxiety. Stop feeling nervous, she scolded herself. They’re family. It’s going to be great! She added the exclamation mark in her mind to really sell it, then pulled open the back screen door and called inside to her parents, “They’re here.”

  Tug and Ninette hurried out the door. “Apron,” Maggie reminded her mother.

  “Yes, right.” Ninette, who seemed as nervous as Maggie felt, untied her apron and tossed it behind her.

  The sedan parked in the small graveled lot. A middle-aged man with gray-tinged strawberry-blond hair and a wide, toothy grin emerged from the driver’s side of the car. “Hello there,” he called to the Crozats. “Doug MacDowell and the gang here.” He leaned into the car and yelled, “Susie, everyone, get the lead out.”

  Two twentysomethings, one male and one female, emerged from the back seat, each clutching a cell phone in one hand. Finally, a small, lithe, woman who appeared to be in her forties to Doug’s late fifties, exited the car. This had to be Susannah Crozat MacDowell, the family’s distant cousin. Maggie searched the woman’s blonde coloring and delicate features for a family resemblance and found none.

  “Hello, or should I say bonjour?” Susannah said with a small smile and wave.

  “Either works with us,” Tug said. “Welcome, cuz. Welcome.”

  The two families approached each other, meeting in the middle of the lot. After a round of awkward handshakes and hugs, Ninette said, “Come into the main house. We’ll give you a tour and then celebrate with cocktails.”

  “If you don’t mind, I’d rather rest first,” Susannah said. “The flight here was a bit of a bear. We had to make two stops.”

  “I’m so sorry,” was Ninette’s automatic response to the hint of reproach in Susannah’s tone. Maggie refrained from saying to her mother, Why are you sorry?

  “No problem,” Tug said. “We’ll get you settled in, then rendezvous for dinner.”

  “Sounds like a plan,” Doug said with geniality. “Johnnie, Bonnie, look alive. Say hello.”

  The twentysomethings reluctantly tore their attention away from their phones. “Hello,” they said in unison.

  “My twins,” Doug explained.

  “From his first marriage,” Johnnie said. He exchanged a look with Bonnie, and both cast a baleful glance at their stepmother. The duo, who had inherited their father’s strawberry-blond coloring, had matching pale-blue eyes that reminded Maggie of the terrifying children in Village of the Damned, an old horror movie an ex-boyfriend once made her watch. Maggie debated which she found more macabre: the film or the weird twins in front of her.

  Tug, determined to dispel the tension, clapped his hands together and announced in a jovial tone, “Well, suis-moi. That means, follow me.” Johnnie and Bonnie engaged in a conversation with each other in French, speaking too fast for Maggie to understand. “Right,” her father said, embarrassed. “You speak French.”

  Doug popped the trunk. “Ignore the twins; they’re a couple of a-holes.” Ninette stifled a gasp at the man’s description of his offspring. “Everyone grab a bag. Susiebell, I’ll get yours.”

  “Thank you, my love.” She held up her hands, which were thin to the point of bony. “I have to protect these. They’re my livelihood.”

  One of Susie’s stepchildren—Maggie wasn’t sure which one—snorted. She did wonder how the woman’s delicate hands could pummel muscles for hours on end, but Susannah had presented glowing references from two previous employers. Maggie shook off her doubts and pulled a suitcase out of the trunk. The group began their traipse through the woods to the plantation’s schoolhouse–turned–Maggie’s art studio–turned–MacDowell accommodations.

  At six PM, the MacDowells joined their hosts in the mansion’s front parlor. Maggie made sure to greet each MacDowell with a full glass of wine. She introduced the family to Bo, who was kitted out in a blazer and tie, which, given the number of times he’d tugged on his collar, he clearly hated. After a moment, Grand-mère wafted in, followed by a trail of gardenia perfume, and there was another round of introductions. “This couldn’t be more exciting, could it?” She held the two peach fabric swatches up to Bonnie, who clutched a wineglass in one hand and her omnipresent cell phone in the other. “This or this?” Gran asked.

  Bonnie pointed to one of the swatches with her wineglass. “This.”

  “I like her,” Gran announced to all. She accepted a Sazerac from Tug, thanked her son, and took a seat.

  Maggie passed a platter of Crawtatoes, an appetizer invention of her mother’s consisting of new potatoes stuffed with a crawfish filling. There was a lull in the conversation. “How exactly are y’all related?” Bo asked, mostly to fill the silence. “Maggie told me, but I don’t remember.”

  “My several-times-great-grandfather was the brother of Tug’s several-times-great-grandfather,” Susannah said. “He came to Louisiana from Canada in the early 1800s and bought land that abuts Crozat Plantation, then decided to return to Canada. He wasn’t a fan of the humidity.”

  “Who is?” Gran said, sipping her Sazerac. “It’s our cross to bear in this otherwise glorious state.”

  “Susie’s family still owns the land,” Doug piped in. “Thought we’d check it out for our senior years. Trade Celsius for Fahrenheit, eh?”

  Gran giggled. “You said eh. That’s adorable.”

  “How strong did you make her drink?” Maggie murmured to her father, who rolled his eyes.

  “It’d be nice to have family as neighbors,” Ninette said as she topped off Doug’s wineglass. “Your business must be doing well if you’re thinking about retirement.”

  “Can’t complain. I own a couple of print shops.”

  Doug directed this to Bo, who nodded politely. “Ah.” Bo turned to the twins. “What about you? Are you in the family business?”

  “God, no,” the twins said in unison.

  Bonnie held up her phone. “I’m a lifestyle blogger. An influencer.”

  “Translation: unemployed,” Doug said.

  “Daaaad,” Bonnie whined.

  Johnnie held up his wineglass. “And I’m a poet.”

  “Translation: also unemployed.” Doug drained his glass.

  “You always belittle the simplicity of my life,” Johnnie snapped at his father.

  “Simple as it may be, your father is the one who pays the bills for it,” Susannah said to her stepson, who responded with an ugly glare.

  A timer in the kitchen dinged. “Dinner’s ready,” Ninette said.

  She jumped up and practically ran out of the room. The others followed. Maggie pulled Bo back. “Tell me I didn’t make a terrible mistake hiring Susannah,” she said sotto voce.

  Bo, uncomfortable emotionally as well as physically, tugged at his collar. “Whoever invented ties hated men.”

  “And whoever invented bras hated women. We’ve had this conversation before. Stop stalling. Back to Susannah.”

  Bo craned his neck, looking into the dining room, where the MacDowells had taken their seats. “You hired Susannah as a massage therapist. That’s the make-or-break here. If she’s good at her job—and you say she has great recs—you’ll be okay.”

  “Daaaad,” Bonnie whined again from the dining room.

  Maggie downed the contents of her wineglass, then grabbed Bo’s and knocked back his. “This could be a very long month.”

  * * *

  Fortunately, Ninette’s stellar meal, featuring Shrimp Remoulade, jambalaya, and Bourbon Pecan Bread Pudding, was such a hit with the MacDowells that the family shelved its squabbling. After dinner, Doug, pleading jet lag, retreated to the studio and the twins decided to explore Pelican’s “nightlife.”

  “That’s gonna be a real short trip,” Bo warned th
em as they walked to their cars. “You got Junie’s Oyster Bar and Dance Hall and … that’s it.”

  Maggie gave Susannah a tour of the spa and was heartened by the woman’s enthusiasm for the space. “The colors are exactly right, so soothing,” the massage therapist said. She picked up a handful of decorative smooth stones from a bowl on the reception desk. “And these will be perfect for my hot-stone massage.”

  Preparations for the first weekend of Pelican’s Spooky Past absorbed Maggie’s time and attention for the two days after the MacDowells’ arrival. In addition to making sure Crozat had everything the B and B would need for their guests’ activities, she finished curating an exhibit of artwork inspired by the supernatural folklore of Doucet Plantation, once the home of Ninette’s ancestors, now where Maggie worked as an art restoration specialist. Back at Crozat, Susannah offered Maggie a sample hot-stone massage that proved so rejuvenating it allayed any fears she had about the woman’s expertise. The residual relaxation even made actor-slash-freeloader Barrymore Tuttle less annoying.

  A jitney loaded with the weekend’s first guests pulled up to Crozat midafternoon on Friday. Since Bon Ami Plantation’s theme was “Late, Lamented Pets,” plus a pet costume parade, some of Crozat’s visitors were of the four-legged or feathered variety. Gopher and Jolie—the family’s rescue basset hound and Chihuahua mix, respectively—barked greetings to the animals. In keeping with the Halloween theme, Gopher was dressed as a doggy vampire and Jolie made an adorable canine ghost. “Love the costumes and decorations,” Jennifer, a Rubenesque real estate agent from New Orleans, enthused. “Don’t we, Benedict?” She directed this to Benedict Cumberpooch, the fluffy Pomeranian she held under her arm.

  “Wait until you hear this,” Maggie said. She ran up the manor house’s front steps and rang the doorbell, which responded with a scream. Jennifer shrieked her joy while the guests laughed and clapped, much to Maggie’s pleasure.